Indian broadband update

Back in April, I commented about Indian telcom chief Dayanidhi Maran’s plan for 2007 to be the year of broadband. Here we are at the middle of the year and nothing positive yet, just negative news:

– Maran is out as telecom chief, some sort of power play within the DMK governement
– no new ISP’s licenses being issued
– Last couple of days there have been stories in the paper about TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) wanting to regulate Google, MSN and VoIP for security reasons – bull$hit, the only security they are worried about is their financial security

When I hear the world “regulate” in India, the next sound I hear is the sound of a cash register. Because what the government wants todo is monetize some service or product via a tax. In today’s Times of India (June 20th), they mentioned that ISP would be able to offer international long distance calls as cheap as 50 paisa a minute (which is 1.25 cents a minute).

My question is, why are Indian ISP’s trying to build content and services. Why not let the ISP’s stick to building out the infrastructure and letting people like Skype and Jajah provide cheap voice calls.